


to walk a mile in her shoes

by keeplovinanyway



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: F/F, Gender Dysphoria, Genderswap, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Pride, Sexual Harassment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 02:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeplovinanyway/pseuds/keeplovinanyway
Summary: Phil wakes up, and something's decidedly not the same.He's a woman, and so is Dan.





	to walk a mile in her shoes

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write this story for ages, and the fic fest was the final push to actually go for it. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Many thanks to [lilactreesinwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilactreesinwinter) for beta-ing this story! Your kind words (and correction of my wrong kind of dashes) meant a lot.

 

Phil is dreaming. It‘s a very strange dream. He is a girl, it seems – a girl, or a woman, but aside from that, everything seems to be the same.

It feels so real.

In the dream, he was waking up when he noticed his whole body feeling just slightly off. He hadn’t known what it was at first, because, well – it’s always difficult to notice the lack of something.

He’s not hard.

It feels very unreal, to be looking at his – at not his penis. That’s not hard, because it’s not there. Because he is – he has a vulva. It’s the strangest thing he’s ever dreamed.

He waits for something to happen.

It’s a dream. Things happen in dreams.

The duvet feels soft on his legs, where he’s thrown it back. He’s still holding up his boxers and staring at the dark curls curving over soft roundness that he’s found there.

He feels creepy, suddenly, staring at a girl’s vulva. His vulva, he doesn’t know. He lets the waistband snap down.

Why does the duvet feel so soft? Does he want to look?

Phil is scared, all of a sudden. He doesn’t like this dream. If he’ll just lie down, the blanket back over his body, perhaps there’ll be a new dream then.

Dan is not there. The dreams without Dan are often scary ones.

Phil curls up on his side, feeling strange in all his body parts. Everything just feels so – off. He rubs a hand over his face.

There’s no stubble. There’s just softness, everywhere. He fingers along his jaw, where the bone seems to have shrunk backwards into his skull, covered by more fat and skin.

Why does nothing happen? Why does he not wake up?

Phil can feel himself starting to shake, feels his heartbeat rise and his breathing getting shallower. Dan, he needs Dan, why can’t his mind conjure Dan?

Deep breaths, he thinks, in Dan’s voice. Calm down, Phil.

If he manages to fall asleep in the dream, will he then wake up for real?

Except he really has to pee.

When Phil was a child, he used to pee in his bed until second year. He only got it under control once he’d managed to notice in his dreams that he needed to pee, or was already peeing. Peeing in his dreams usually meant he was peeing in real life as well, or close to it. He always woke up, then.

Phil doesn’t wake up.

There’s something clawing at the back of his mind that he’s really, really trying not to notice.

He uncurls slightly. He doesn’t even know how to pee with not a penis. Pee-nis. Is that where it comes from?

Phil pushes the duvet back. His legs have hairs on them, but they’re sparse and lighter. And softer, as well.

He’s just exhausted from all of this.

Except that when he opens the door to the en suite bathroom, he finds Dan sitting on the floor like he does when he is having a crisis, and Dan is decidedly also a woman.

A woman who whips her (his?) head around, and she has Dan’s eyes.

“Phil,” he says, in a voice that doesn’t sound like him at all, and then his eyes get bigger. “Fuck, that’s strange.”

“I know,” Phil says, “but I can’t seem to wake up.”

And that is strange, because his own voice is also not his voice.

Dan just looks at him, and Phil feels incredibly self-conscious.

“Phil.”

He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t like to hear his not-voice.

“This is not a dream.”

~~

Dan posts something to his insta story.

Phil doesn’t like it, it feels like lying he said, but Dan doesn’t care.

Dan posts a picture of his feet in Phil’s socks with a funny caption and a spon link.

“Nobody knows they’re not my feet,” he says.

“They’re your feet,” Phil replies, because he doesn’t like to think of Dan as anything that’s not him.

And also, he’s scared that they’ll analyze Dan’s feet and see that something’s off and then–

Dan’s got his hand on Phil’s thigh.

“You’re freaking out again, stop it.”

“I’ll stop when I know how we get back to being – us.”

They’re still in their bedroom. It feels like a sanctuary, and maybe like it’s not quite as real as if they go out into the rest of the flat.

Dan puts his phone on the nightstand and then lays down. He’s long like he always is, just a little slimmer except for his hips and his chest. His boobs. Dan’s boobs.

Phil looks at his own feet, he deems that safer.

“Phil,” Dan says, and it’s gentle, even gentler with that smooth voice of his. “I don’t know what’s happening either. Like we said before, yeah? We will just wait for tomorrow.”

Phil doesn’t like waiting.

“Aren’t you excited?” Dan asks. He toys with the hem of Phil’s boxers. “A little bit? This is like, movie material.”

Phil shakes his head. At least that still feels the same.

“I am just scared,” he says.

He’s been watching Dan do things for the past twenty minutes. They’d freaked out together, and then talked about what the ever-loving fuck this was, then they’d googled and found nothing. Phil had sat back against the headboard, and Dan had decided to just do things. He’d put on clothes, all different kinds, and each time commented on how he couldn’t fit the trousers on his bigger thighs and how good his boobs looked.

And then he’d posted to insta.

Phil has just been watching. He doesn’t get it.

“I don’t get it,” he says, “how you can be so calm.”

Dan smooths his hand over Phil’s knee and tickles him.

“Maybe I’m in shock. Maybe I am excited. I don’t know how to change this, and this is a chance I’ll probably never get again, so I try to just make the best of it.”

“I don’t want to be a girl,” Phil whispers.

Dan looks like he does when he’s about to say something social-justice-y, but he seems to stop himself and instead pulls Phil into his arms. Phil can feel his boobs there.

Fuck this.

“We’ll figure it out,” Dan says. “Deep breaths, Phil.”

~~

Something very strange happens then. It… feels okay.

They’re hungry, so they go about their morning, and Dan is as excited as he is about anything new he’s obsessed with.

It does feel more real once they left their bedroom, but somehow, it doesn’t feel like a bad thing to Phil.

Maybe he’s just worried all his worry out in the two hours after waking up. There’s just no worrying capacity left.

“I want to play Mario Kart as girls,” Dan announces.

“Why? Are you implying a girl would be worse at video games?”

Dan doesn’t even dignify that with a response.

“I wanna try everything we do in these bodies.”

Phil smirks. “Everything everything?”

Dan locks eyes with him. He looks really good with his curls and this female face.

“Everything everything.”

Something sparks in Phil’s stomach, and he’s not sure whether it’s excitement or fear or both.

“Okay,” he just says.

And then they play Mario Kart, and Dan wins because apparently these new bodies haven’t changed that, and then he says, “I want to go outside.”

“What?” Phil says, because, well.

“I want to go outside. Just! Think about it. Nobody would recognize us. Nobody would ever think that these two women are us. Fuck. We could even hold hands.”

They don’t hold hands. Not where people are.

“I don’t know,” Phil says.

He crosses his arms over his chest which is strange, because he’s got boobs there. Apparently, Phil as a girl would have had really big boobs. Like. Huge. It’s kind of getting uncomfortably sweaty under there, but he hasn’t dared touching them yet.

Dan has. Dan has touched himself pretty much everywhere that wasn’t covered by boxers. At least as far as Phil knows.

Phil has only watched himself breathe in the mirror. His forehead is much smaller, or his hairline is just further down, or perhaps it’s both. His hair is the same, just messy, because he doesn’t know how to style it in a way that fits this face of his.

His lips are bigger. His face is both more round and more slim, or is it softer? It’s profoundly different in a way that makes him look so unlike himself. Like he were his sister.

He almost wanted to send his mom a selfie.

And then there’s his body.

Narrow shoulders. His arms long and lanky, freckles like he’s used to, only with even less muscle than he usually has. His hands are slim.

There’s his boobs, big and hanging. They are heavy, actually. He’s been noticing it in the way he carries himself, the way he walks. He’d hopped down the stairs at first before his boobs had literally slapped down onto his chest.

His waist is narrow, his hips broad. He’s never had much of a bum before.

Phil had watched in the mirror as he’d breathed, and he’d been a girl. A woman. A very grown up woman with a body not unlike his, but at the same time, so very different.

He doesn’t think he would have recognized himself if he hadn’t know it was him.

“Please?” Dan says. “It’ll be fun!”

If he’d really wanted to, he could say no and they’d stay home all day, hoping for this to pass, Phil knows that.

“What if we change back while we’re out?” he asks.

“Then we’ll just be Dan and Phil, going for a walk.”

Phil doesn’t think that’ll be it. He doesn’t even know how they changed in the first place. How the mechanics of it work, what even happened. Part of him still thinks this is a dream, but a bigger part of him knows it’s not.

He sighs.

“Okay, but you have to buy me ice cream.”

~~

Ice cream apparently tastes just the same with female taste buds.

It’s nice out today. For the past two days, it’s beginning to feel almost like spring. It’s still a little chilly and Dan is wearing just a thin sweater. Phil had noticed his nipples poking through earlier, and, well, they definitely are bigger than they usually are.

“I can’t get over how everything’s the same”, Dan murmurs beside him.

“What did you expect? Different colours?”

“Well apparently some women do have two different cones, or what are they called? Two different versions of seeing red in their eyes. Or perhaps it was green, I need to look it up on wikipedia later. This is really fascinating, because we always think we see colours the same way, but then you just find out someone else sees way more than you! Are you seeing more colours?”

Phil bumps his hip into Dan’s.

“Yeah, you’re blue. That’s new.”

“Your mum is blue.”

“I’ll tell Kath you said that.”

“I wanna see you say anything to Kath about this day.”

Somehow, they both seem to have accepted the hypothesis that this will just last a day. Phil tries not to let himself fall into that scary big hole of what if it doesn’t, and what that would actually mean for talking to his family.

Dan leans in and licks a stripe across Phil’s ice cream. His first instinct is to jolt back and look around.

“Dan – Um, Ariana!”

They’d decided to give themselves fake names for the day out, just in case. Of course Dan had to go a bit overboard.

Dan licks his lips and grins.

“What’s up, Sarah Michelle?”

Well, perhaps he hadn’t been much better himself. It’s not every day you get to name yourself after your female idol.

“Sarah is enough. Also, stop that. I– it’s weird, we don’t do that.”

Dan lets his fingers twirl around Phil’s for a little moment.

“I think we know two guys who don’t do that, but Sarah and Ariana love PDA. God, we absolutely adore it, don’t we, babe?”

Phil just can’t help glancing around, as much as he wish that wasn’t his first instinct. Nobody seems to notice anything amiss.

“Sure, honey”, he says.

Dan threads his fingers through Phil’s properly this time, tentatively. Phil’s heart thumps heavily in his chest. He feels like he is 19 again and for the first time out on the streets with this guy he was dating, or 23 and holding Dan’s hand in Portugal.

“Okay?” Dan asks, and Phil loves him fiercely.

“Okay”, he says, and squeezes.

They’re holding hands. Outside. Where people are all around them.

Walking through town as a woman, holding the hand of your girlfriend, turns out to make Phil feel everything at the same time.

He is nervous, excited, stupidly in love. He is proud of it, proud of Dan by his side, with his curls and his smile that makes his eyes glimmer, and with his stupid bravery.

He’s scared, because he has never done this. Never in the past many years, never with Dan in public, he’s just never done this quite like they are doing now. He is scared that someone will scream, or someone’s eyes will get big and he’ll see that look of recognition and excitement that he both loves and fears.

“Phil,” Dan whispers and squeezes his hand. “Look”, and there it is, another couple like themselves, two girls holding hands, just walking and smiling brightly at them. Brighter than you usually smile at someone random on the street, and brighter than you smile at a queer couple if you are walking with three feet between you and your boyfriend.

And then Phil feels proud, so fucking proud, because he is queer and people see that and because he finally feels like a part of this. Like a part of this community.

He feels like he did when they walked Pride once, masked and costumed head to toe, except this is even more exciting because in their own way, they get to be themselves right now.

Dan squeezes his hand again and when Phil turns to him, he smiles tightly with a glimmer in his eyes, the one that means that he’s close to crying.

“Yee,” Phil says.

And then he’s sad, a little bit or perhaps a lot.

Because they don’t get to do this. Not actually, not when they are guys, not as Dan and Phil. They chose not to do this a long time ago, for many reasons, some of which still hold up. They still choose not to do this, for both those and new reasons. It’s always felt safer, always felt like less of a struggle.

Right now, Phil notices that by choosing to hide, they miss out on a lot more than just PDA. Right now he doesn’t just hold Dan’s hand, he shows himself in a way that’s profoundly him, and he realizes he doesn’t care about what anyone says to them. Queers smile at them and that’s what he cares about, only that.

They walk for a while like this. The world feels beautiful.

“It feels like we are on holiday from being ourselves”, Dan says, and Phil knows he’s right. He doesn’t know if he misses home yet. (He still wishes he knew when the return flight was.)

Phil kisses Dan. He does it while they’re sat on the wall by the river, feet dangling above the water, watching the birds fly above. The sun shines golden in Dan’s hair and he is talking about gender norms, about pride and expectations and his own identity. Phil thinks about how he loves him, in any body he’s in, and how he would want to kiss him if they were home.

And then he realizes that they are on holiday, and he kisses Dan, right there on his mouth, his plump and talking mouth and Dan makes this squeaky noise and cards his fingers right through Phil’s hair.

He feels powerful.

He feels powerful, until someone whistles behind them. They jump apart, Dan’s hand on Phil’s side to steady him.

“Fucking hell”, Dan says.

There’s a guy on the bench right behind them. Phil doesn’t know how long he’s been watching.

“Nice show, ladies,” he says, and Phil feels something wash over him hot and cold, “can I join in?”

Next to him, Dan swings his legs over the wall and stands up.

“What the fuck”, he says, “no. Why do you think – dude, don’t talk to women like that! This is not – you don’t get to do this!”

Dan looks small, standing there in front of this guy with his legs spread wide on the bench and his grin so dangerously calm.

“Oh you’re a feisty one”, he says. “I like that. Wanna come home with me? Take your little girlfriend with you? I can show you how to really feel good”. And then he does this thrusting motion with his hips and Phil feels like he’s gonna be sick.

“Come on, D– come on,” he says, “let’s go.”

Dan ignores him.

“With that?” He points at the guys’ crotch. “I guarantee you I get a better dick in me whenever I want to. You’re a cunt. You can fucking die.”

The guy looks shocked for a split second, before his face contorts in rage.

“Shut your mouth, bitch”, he sneers. He moves like he’s about to get up.

“Dan!” Phil says. “Dan, come on, let’s go.”

Phil takes Dan by the arm, the place where they usually hold onto each other in a public setting, a safe place on the forearm. He’s so scared.

All of a sudden, there’s another female voice cutting in.

“Oh, darlings, there you are!” she exclaims. “I’ve been looking for you. Come on, I’ve got a table picked out, just over there.”

“Um”, Phil says. The woman is about the age of his mom, sporty looking and with a big handbag by her side. He’s pretty sure he’s never seen her in his life. Judging by the look Dan throws him, he hasn’t either.

She looks at him like it means something, like an offer.

“Are you gonna come with me? Oh, let me tell you all about this shop I just went in to, it’s glamorous. Just over there, are you coming?”

Behind them, the guy sits down, slowly.

“Fuck these bitches”, Phil hears him mumble. “Fucking queers.”

He shivers.

“Um, yeah,” he says, “thank you.”

The woman babbles on about this shop she found just like she promised, and Dan and Phil just follow, silent. Phil feels adrenaline still pumping through his veins.

They turn a corner and the woman stops and looks at them, and puts a hand on each of their shoulders. She’s tiny, like Kath is, and Phil feels his heartbeat slowly calming down.

“Are you two okay? My daughter is your age, and I always tell her to stay out of these situations. Sweetheart,” she addresses Dan, “as right as you were, don’t mess with these guys.”

“Thank you,” Phil says. “This has never happened to us.”

Oh, and how it has never happened.

Dan looks angry still. So angry.

“I just can’t believe women have to deal with this kind of shit,” he says and it sounds like he’s spitting venom. “Like, how do you do it? How do you stay so calm? This fucking dickhead just came and acted as if we were his to–”

“Oh honey,” saviour-woman says, “you stay calm because you know you have to. As a black trans woman, I’d be dead by now if I’d told a man to fuck off each time he was rude to me. Sometimes it’s about fighting to show them up, and sometimes it’s about fighting to stay safe. And you gotta stick up for each other, especially if such a wonderful young lady as you wants to pick a rightful fight with a guy you won’t ever change.”

Dan sighs. “I am sorry you have to deal with this.”

“Oh I am alright, I am just glad nothing happened to you. I do not actually have a table though, and I got to run errands. Will you two lovebirds stay safe?”

Phil nods. “Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. We’re just gonna head off home now, I think.”

When they do part ways, Phil threads his fingers through Dan’s again, despite everything. It feels like a win of its own kind.

“Nevertheless, she persisted”, Dan mumbles. “Women are fucking warriors.”

Living the life of a woman, even just for a day, turns out to make Phil feel all kind of things.

~~

Phil is not a woman.

They’re home, in boxers and night t-shirts and with big plates of take-away in front of them.

“It just doesn’t feel right for me. I just–”, he gestures down toward his body, “all of this makes me feel strangely icky.”

“You miss your dick”, Dan says around a mouthful of thai curry.

“I miss your dick.”

Dan’s eyes glimmer mischievously.

“Are we gonna like, do that later? Find out what exactly is all different?”

Phil feels something tingle in places he didn’t have yesterday, in a way he didn’t know they could actually tingle.

“Sure”, he says, as if either were just as fine with him.

Dan isn’t really listening, he’s got his thinking face on.

“Does it freak you out if I tell you it doesn’t feel that strange to me?”

“Like. You feel like a woman?”

Dan sits back and tucks his legs under his body. He looks like a woman, like a really pretty one.

“No…,” he says. “Not really. I don’t feel all that different. It’s just a body? I am fucking excited about it because it’s very different and this is like a really great documentary or wikipedia binge or something, this doesn’t make sense, does it? I just. It feels like a blessing, to understand how it’s different, but– I feel the same, just as myself as in another body. I am not bothered. Makes me think about the gender thing, you know.”

‘The gender thing’, aka the journey Dan has been on for years, the one with the earring and the ‘straight phase’ and the glittery nails and the dress in their closet.

Somehow, Phil feels like after this strange day he gets Dan more than he ever did before. He’s supported him, because it’s Dan, and he’d never do anything to hurt Dan, not consciously, but he never fully understand just how he must have felt all this time.

He does now. He feels wrong, just very very wrong. He wants his boobs cut off and it’s not even been 24 hours. He wants his bones to shift back into their usual shape. He wants a fucking beard and a fucking dick and he doesn’t want to feel like a girl anymore.

He is exhausted.

“There’s too many feelings today,” Phil says. “Nothing makes sense anymore.”

“Oh my god,” Dan says, “oh fuck. Right. I didn’t think about that. Estrogen and stuff. We probably think differently, and feel differently. Shit. Wow. Did I feel differently today?”

It feels like a punch to his chest, and Phil just starts crying.

Dan looks at him in shock, and then he uncurls and gathers Phil into his arms. Phil goes easily, squishing against his side and soaking Dan’s shirt with his tears. He never cries just like this, he almost never cries, period.

“There’s your feelings, babe,” Dan says and huffs a small laugh.

Phil clings harder.

Dan is soft. He is warm and soft and perhaps not quite as solid as he usually feels.

“You feel like a pillow,” he mumbles.

“Okay,” Dan says, “sure. Yeah. Let me switch into a pillow next time.”

It makes Phil smile. He imagines Dan as a pillow, black and glitter and really squishy. His eyes are floating above it and there’s a crease as his mouth.

“You’d look good as a pillow,” he tells him.

Their flat feels peaceful as they lay like this, Phil calming down and cursing the extra estrogen that makes all of this way more intense, perhaps. But it doesn’t matter, not really, not right now. The setting sun is shining warm into their living room. Dan is long and lanky and he’s talking about gender dysphoria, about gender in general and its expression and society, about bodies and theories and Phil just lays and listen. The occasional ‘mhm’ is enough in moments like this.

They’re enough, he realizes.

And as much as Phil doesn’t feel comfortable in this body, with this whole experience and this insecurity of what happens next either, as much as all of this confuses him – there’s also something pretty exciting about it.

Dan is exciting. His face is exciting, his long eyelashes and curvy lips. His hips that are broad and inviting. His boobs, small hills under his shirt. Phil reaches out tentatively and curves a hand over one of them. It makes Dan stop talking.

“Uh. Having fun there?”

Phil swallows. “Uh-huh. This is soft.”

“Oh! Fuck. You’ve never done that.”

That’s true. Phil’s never done that. He may be bisexual, may have kissed girls and had crushes on female film starts occasionally, but he’s only really been with guys, only properly for real been with Dan.

Dan lays a hand over Phil’s and presses softly. Their hands look beautiful, on top of each other. They look pretty.

Dan turns and kisses at Phil’s hairline.

“Wanna go to bed?”

Phil does.

~~

Later, they lay in bed. Female bodies, next to each other this time.

Phil feels a whole lot different than he did this morning. A whole lot less scared.

“I hope we wake up normal again,” he says.

Dan is on his phone, his face tinted blue. He’s really beautiful. It makes something click into place inside his chest, knowing that he loves Dan in any body, in any way.

“M-hm,” Dan says. He’s not really listening. Phil kicks him in the shins.

“Ow! What the fuck!”

“You weren’t listening,” Phil whines. “I hate you. I need a new girlfriend.”

He presses his feet between Dan’s.

“They wouldn’t tolerate your ice feet anyway. You’re lucky to have me.”

Suddenly, Dan smiles at him.

“You’re pretty, by the way. Kinda sad you don’t like this body.”

“Would you have given me estrogens until I looked like you wanted me to? That’s creepy.”

“Good idea!” Dan chuckles and shuffles closer to Phil. “I wonder what we wake up as tomorrow.”

It makes Phil scared, to think about that. He closes his eyes and thinks about today. About walking through town, with his hand in Dan’s.

“I love you,” Dan says in a quiet voice.

Phil opens his eyes again and looks at him.

Dan looks earnest. His curls flopped over his forehead, his eyes dark and big.

“If I stay a girl will you put me into a robot body with a penis? And a beard?”

A laugh shakes Dan’s chest.

“Yeah,” he smiles. “Sure. I’ll do that.”

Phil smiles back.

“I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yay, you read to the end! I am glad! :)
> 
> Please leave a [Kudos] if you did, it'll make me smile. If you tell me what you thought in a [Comment], you'll literally have me grinning down at my phone after my heart did flip-floppy things.
> 
> reblog this post on [tumblr](https://heartfeltfangirl.tumblr.com/post/183121288138/to-walk-a-mile-in-her-shoes)!


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